Game of the Day

Super Mario Galaxy

Description: Super Mario Galaxy launched in November of 2007 and accomplished the rare achievement of hitting the 1 million copies sold first week worldwide mark.  However; despite the strong launch, first week sales only account for ~13% of the game's total sales and the first month total accounts for less than 30% of total sales.  Considering how strong the launch was, and the fact the game is still selling moderately well each week, that is very impressive.  So why did Super Mario Galaxy continue to sale so well after its launch? Was it positive word of mouth, lack of competition on the console, continued marketing, or something else?  Read on to see what we decided.

So you can get an idea of how well Super Mario Galaxy performed after its launch, here is a graph of the game’s worldwide total sales since its release.

You can see that the game has continued to have consistent weekly sales nearly two years after the game released.  Now let’s look at the game’s sales by region, to see if there are any discrepancies per region.

Super Mario Galaxy’s worst region for total sales has been Japan, where just over a million of the 8 million plus worldwide sales have come from.  Japan was also the region with the most frontloaded sales, seeing ~40% of its 1.06 million sales in the region in the first month.  Even more surprising is that the game saw ~81% of its total sales by the end of its first holiday period, ten weeks after release.

Software sales are typically more frontloaded in Japan than in the other regions, but it is still very surprising how condensed the games sales are in the first couple of months of release. One possible explanation for this is that Mario Galaxy had more competition on Wii in Japan early on in its life than in the other regions.  Wii Fit was released a few weeks after Super Mario Galaxy, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released soon after the end of the holiday period.  It is possible that this extra competition contributed to the frontloaded sales of the game in this region, as in the Americas and Europe Super Mario Galaxy was the only major holiday 2007 release and the next high profile game was not released for about 3 months after the holiday season was over.

Now moving on to the Europe/Other’s region which is Super Mario Galaxy’s second strongest region, with the game’s total sales currently standing at 2.65 million copies. Compared to Japan the legs for Super Mario Galaxy in the region were very impressive, with only ~22% of total sales coming in the first month, and ~44% of total sales by the end of the first holiday at week 7.

Super Mario Galaxy has seen its strongest sales in the America’s with current total sales at a whopping 4.23 million. However; Super Mario Galaxy’s legs were not as impressive as in the Others region, with first month sales accounting for ~33% of total sales, and by the end of the first holiday at week 10 the game had already built up ~63% of its current total.

Super Mario Galaxy has an interesting sales trajectory, as the ongoing weekly sales of the game after launch differ greatly for each region.  The continued sales in the Others region is extremely impressive, solid in the Americas and disappointing in Japan. As mentioned previously the frontloaded sales in Japan can largely be contributed to the region traditionally having more frontloaded sales than the other regions especially for established franchises, as well as Super Mario Galaxy having competition on the Wii early on in its retail lifespan.

The more impressive sustained sales in the Others and Americas regions can be contributed to a couple of factors.  The game had less tough competition in the regions than in Japan, with the next high profile release not coming until four months later in the Americas. The fewer high profile releases meant the marketing and advertising focus was maintained on Super Mario Galaxy for a longer period of time. The established Mario brand name, being a franchise that consumers associate with Nintendo, encourages new Wii purchasers to pick up the game when they buy the Wii console.  The other factor that I believed played a significant role is positive word of mouth, the game is commonly considered amongst the best if not the best game on the Wii.  With people enjoying the game plus the mass appeal of the Mario franchise, Wii owners were consistently finding out about the game, and then picking up the title for themselves.  

It is possible in the future if the game receives an official price cut after the introduction of a “player’s choice” type discount line, that the weekly sales of the game will pick up drastically again, which would even further decrease the first month/total sales ratio.  It is also possible, but less likely, the game could become part of an official bundle at some point, as Nintendo has frequently bundled Mario titles with their systems in the past.  For now however; neither of those possibilities have had any impact on current sales.  What is definite is that Mario Galaxy is continuing to sale around 12,000 copies each week, which means that the game’s legs are becoming more impressive all the time.

That is my take on the game’s continued high weekly sales, here is what the VGChartz community thought.

Buzzi – “Mario Galaxy is one of the best games of this gen. the reviews were all positive, and also the players liked it very much.
Probably initially it would have sold like the past 3d Mario games, but as word of mouth kept going this title became one of the Wii's must have, and so probably part of the new Wii userbase bought it.”

Cheebee – “Well, both critics and players liked it. It's one of the highest rated titles in recent history. It's a core title, but casuals like it a lot too. Basically the game appeals to almost everyone, whether they've played games for ages or not. For games like that, word of mouth really goes a long way. Also, it's Mario. Any Mario title sells tons.”

That is it for today’s Look at Those Legs Game of the Day, there will be another edition next week, until then head over to the most recent “Change in Sales” Game of the Day thread featuring Devil May Cry 4.

Most recent "Sales of the Day" articles, Change in Sales, Sales Battle, Retro Sales, Look at Those Legs.